


Summer of Love

by Moebius



Category: Dirty Dancing (1987)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 09:41:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8885968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moebius/pseuds/Moebius
Summary: In the summer of 1967, thousands of young people from all over America descend on San Francisco. Frances Houseman was one of them.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Luna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luna/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide to Luna! This setting was one I actually had in my head when I signed up for the fandom, so I was really excited to see your request. I hope you like it! Music was a hugely important part of my process on this one, especially because the music of the time is so iconic. I created a spotify playlist that I'll link here once authors are revealed, in case you're interested.

In the summer of 1967, Frances Houseman graduates college, kisses her father on the cheek, and gets on board a rainbow-colored Volkswagen bus making a one-way trip from West Hadley to San Francisco. She hadn’t painted the van, but she’d chipped in for the paint, and the look on her sister’s face definitely makes it all worthwhile.

It’s a long ride across the country, cramped with young men and women full of energy, and though Frances mostly keeps to herself, journalling, she joins in for every sing-along, whether it it’s Bob Dylan or Jefferson Airplane. If she doesn’t know the words, she learns them soon enough.

With all the stops, picking people up along the way, it takes them two weeks. They pull up to the building they’re staying at early enough one morning that it’s still foggy and cold, and all twelve of them practically topple out of the van. Frances wraps her knit shawl around herself and looks around. There’s a group waiting to welcome them, friends of one of the guys she came with, and they invite everyone to a gathering in Dolores Park later. Frances doesn’t want to go, but promises she will, then sets off to find Golden Gate Bridge, ignoring the disappointed looks she gets from a few of them.

She wanders down Market towards the Bay as the sun rises behind her. Frances has a lot on  
her mind. Her parents. Her sister, and her sister’s fiance, their wedding in the fall. Stokley Carmichael and civil rights, Johnson and Vietnam, Bobby Kennedy. And Johnny. She runs her thumb down the inside of one finger, and wonders, not for the first time, where he is right now.

It’s past noon before she realizes she has no idea how to get to the park where she’s supposed to be meeting everyone. A nice man on the pier gives her directions that make a little bit of sense to her. When she gets to the park a couple of hours later, she’s hungry and her feet hurt. She scans the crowd, hundreds of people sprawled on the grass in the bright sun, hoping she’ll recognize someone.

She does, and her breath catches in her throat. Not twenty feet away from her, swaying with music of a small group playing nearby, is Penny. She looks almost exactly the same as Frances remembers her, from that summer four years ago. Her hair is longer now, and there’s a ring of flower circling her head. Her clothes are looser, but the way she moves is so familiar that Frances almost finds herself swaying, too.

Frances clears her throat, and Penny comes to a slow stop. Her eyes light up in recognition and she shakes her head, as if she doesn’t believe what she sees. Frances knows how she feels.

“Baby,” Penny says, and it sounds almost foreign to Frances. Nobody’s called her Baby for a long time now. Her request had finally stuck. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I’m,” Frances searches for the words so she doesn’t sound silly. “I wanted to be here.”

Penny nods, as if the answer makes any sense at all, and Frances is grateful. “How long are you staying?”  
Frances shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m supposed to go back in the fall, Lisa - my sister?” Penny nods. “Lisa’s getting married.”

“To a doctor from Yale?”

“Harvard.”

“Your dad must be proud.”

A small child breaks from the group and runs up to Penny, hiding behind the flowing folds of her skirt, thumb stuck in mouth and eyes wide, saving Frances from an answer. He - or she, Frances isn’t sure - must be about two, with bare, dirty feet and chubby legs. Frances blinks once, twice, then looks back at Penny. “Oh, you have… I figured…”

Penny laughs, the sound of it tinkling along with the beads in her hair. “Of course you did. You figured I’d never want kids, right?”

Frances shrugs. “I didn’t mean, I just-”

Penny holds up her hand. Her tone is half amused and half exasperated. “Don’t worry about it, Baby. This is Copper. Copper, say hello to Baby.”

“Alright.” Frances finds it easier to talk to kids, sometimes. That’s why she decided she’d be a teacher. What better way to change the world than by teaching the leaders of the future? “Hi Copper.”

“Baby,” Copper parrots, pointing at Frances.

The tinkling laugh from Penny makes Frances blush this time and she shakes her head. “Frances.”

“Don’t listen to the lady, Cop. Everyone knows her name is Baby.”

\--

Penny takes her back to the house she’s staying at with a dozen or so friends. They walk from the warm sun of Mission Dolores up into the fog of the Haight. Penny carries Copper on her hip the whole time, and Frances, who falls behind on the hills, watches the muscles of her back as they move beneath the linen peasant top.

The house is purple with yellow shutters. Inside, the air is hazy with pot smoke and tobacco. Frances is surprised to hear jazz coming from the speakers of the record player. Penny puts Copper down, and she runs off into another room. Frances coughs and takes a deep breath.

“You okay, Baby?”

Frances nods, but doesn’t say anything. She hopes her eyes don’t water. It’s not that she hasn’t been around smoke before, she just always has this reaction at first. But she has a feeling that if she says that to Penny, it’ll sound silly, like an excuse.

Penny takes her hand and pulls her through the apartment through a narrow hallway to a back room where she cracks a window. “Where are you staying?”

“Oh, with some friends at a place in the Castro.”

Penny looks back at her, as if the answer’s surprising, but just says: “Will they miss you?”

“Miss me?”

“God, Baby. Have you changed at all?” She sits on the edge of the bed and pats the space next to her. “Are you _with_ any of them?”

“What? God no.” Frances freezes, hovering just above the bed. “I haven’t been with, I’m not with. Just Johnny.”

Penny’s face freezes for a second, but she recovers quickly. She reaches out and pulls Baby down onto the bed. “Does he still write you?”

“Yeah. You?” Frances looks down at Penny’s hand, surprised by the lingering touch. She remembers the last time Penny touched her. How her breath felt on the back of her neck as they danced, and how soft Penny’s hips were compared to Johnny’s shoulders. She swallows.

That smile is back on Penny’s face, the one that Frances associates with the kind of fond mockery of an older sister. A normal older sister, anyway. It’s dark in the room, and hazy, and she feels lightheaded and warm. Maybe Penny doesn’t reminded Frances of her sister at all, actually. “He told me you were graduating, and I should look you up. He thinks you’d be a good influence for Copper.”

“He… never even told me about her.”

“Of course he didn’t. I think he thought you’d take it the wrong way.”

“Is she… his?”

A sigh escapes Penny’s lips. “I guess he was right. Listen, Baby, things aren’t like they used to be.”

Frances isn’t sure what things Penny’s talking about. Johnny? Penny? Johnny and Penny? He’d never ended things with her, they’d just sort of drifted together, until he was drafted, and as far as Frances was concerned they were still in a relationship. Has he cheated on her with Penny? Was it even cheating if it was with Penny? She opens her mouth, searching for words, but when she can’t find the right ones she kisses Penny instead, surprising them both.

After a moment, Penny pulls away. Her blue eyes are bright. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t really know.” Frances shakes her head, and finds herself staring into Penny’s eyes. “I don’t want to talk about Johnny. I don’t want to talk about anything. It’s my first day in the city and I never expected to see _you_ and you asked if I’m _with_ anyone and I’m not because even when I was _with_ Johnny I guess I real-”

“Baby?”

“What?”

“Shuttup, okay?”

Frances shuts up, which is easy to do because Penny kisses her again. Penny keeps kissing her until they fall back onto the bed, a tangle of limbs and hair and clothes. The flowers from around Penny’s head fall to the bed and are crushed beneath them, some petals tickling the sensitive skin of Frances’ neck as they go. She giggles into a kiss and Penny pulls away long enough to smile that smile again, but this time it sends a shiver up Frances’ spine.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Then she’s kissing France again, and this time she doesn’t stop for a very long time.

\--  
  
_That was the summer of 1967. When everyone called me Frances, except for her. When music and smoke filled the air and you could hear the voice of a generation every night. That was the summer I went to San Francisco, before the world turned upside down. That was my summer with Penny, and I never wanted the summer to end. But I guess everything has to end eventually._


End file.
